State Persecution

Imprisoned Cuban journalist Mijail Bárzaga Lugo was released from jail and flown Thursday to Madrid, where he joined a group of eight of his colleagues freed and brought to Spain this week as part of an extensive release by the Cuban government, according to international press reports. Bárzaga Lugo, who was arrested in March 2003, arrived in Madrid with his family on an Air Europe flight around 2...

Tunisian authorities have arrested Fahem Boukadous, a correspondent for the satellite television station Al-Hiwar al-Tunisi. The police arrested Boukadous Thursday at Farhat Hached Hospital in Sousse. The journalist had been discharged Wednesday after being treated for respiratory problems, according to news reports. His wife told the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) that he...

Three journalists have been detained in Ivory Coast since Tuesday, after they refused to disclose sources for an investigative report detailing the results of a government probe into corruption in the coffee and cocoa export trade, according to local journalists and news reports. Ivorian State Prosecutor Raymond Tchimou, who summoned staffers from the private daily Le Nouveau Courrier—Managing...

A Kuwait City appeal court on Monday overturned Kuwaiti writer and journalist Mohamed Abdel Qader Al-Jassem’s conviction on a charge of defaming Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Sabah, according to Reporters sans Frontières (RSF). Monday's ruling overturned Al-Jassem’s conviction on April 1 for criticising government policy and calling for the prime minister’s resignation. Convicted in other case...

Six Cuban journalists who spent more than seven years in prison for their independent reporting and commentary arrived in Spain today in the first wave of what is expected to be an extensive release of political prisoners by the Cuban government, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Cuban independent journalists Léster Luis González Pentón, Omar Ruíz Hernández, Julio César...

An Egyptian court has sentenced a jailed leader to a year in prison for defaming a former minister more than 14 years ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). A Cairo appeals court last month sentenced Magdy Hussein, who served as editor of the long-banned opposition newspaper Al-Shaab, to a one-year jail term in a defamation case filed in 1996 by the family of then-Interior...

A raid was carried on the newsroom of the independent Uzbek-language broadcaster Osh TV in the southern Kyrgyz city of Osh on Friday, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The Kyrgyz security service (known as SNB) also temporarily detained director Khalil Khudaiberdiyev in the raid on the station. Osh TV is currently off the air, the Uzbek service of the US government-funded...

The Security and National Intelligence Service in Sudan has barred publication of the daily Al-Intibaha. Authorities suspended the newspaper last week because of the newspaper’s supposed role “in strengthening separatist tendencies in the south and the north,” a security official told local reporters. The suspension stemmed from a July 4 article by Editor-in-Chief El-Tayeb Mustafa that criticised...

Syrian authorities are till pressing criminal defamation charges against investigative journalists Bassam Ali and Suhaila Ismail. The journalists co-wrote two investigative reports in 2005 and 2006 on corruption and the misuse of public funds in the Public Company for Fertilisers in Syria. They concluded that almost 2 billion Syrian pounds (US$43 million) were misappropriated in one year. The...

Police in Rwanda arrested the editor of a private newspaper on Thursday last in connection with a series of articles critical of the government, according to local journalists. Agnès Uwimana was taken into custody in the capital, Kigali, over allegations that her Kinyarwanda-language weekly Umurabyo had published stories “inciting the public to disobey,” “articles related to division and ethnicity...